HELP MY UNBELIEF

This statement, I feel, is the story of my life. I accepted Christ at a young age because I believed that he is who he says he is. The perfect son of God, and the sacrificial lamb for all who will believe and accept him. I did not wait to spend time with him, or to begin getting to know what he expected out of me. At eight, I had just as many things that needed to be corrected as any adult because sin, like faith, is also a seed. But gone unchecked, that seed sprouts into uncontrollable, impossible to manage weeds that can not be cut down or tamed by human ingenuity. I needed God's word to become prominent in my life.

All my life I can honestly admit, my biggest problem has always been me. How I handle situations and how I process those tough things, that is all me. At eight, my mother pointed out some character flaws that she saw in me. One was my pride, my inability to let things go without retaliating or paying it backwards. She took the time to show me in God's word how that would never end the way I hoped, but that it would be fuel to a fire that I was already not in control in. Her advice was that I pray and ask God to remove that from me.

The beautiful thing about being eight and learning that you have something to fix is that sincerity and time are more on your side. You are not weighed down with how the world sees you, or what other people are going to think, you really are only concerned about the task at hand. So I began to pray. I was able to pray and watch as God was gradually changing me until one day, only four short years later, my desire for vengeance was gone.

All through my teen years, I kept up with the building of my relationship with God. And I am thankful to say that I am the better for it. I really invested myself in getting to know him, and by default getting to know me. I realized that there were things in me that made me a stranger to myself, and those were things that God knew about me and could work on. The one thing that I am still in the heat of trying to perfect is my ability to believe and live as though something is when it seems as though it isn't.

I am still learning how to take God's word and not just trust it in theory, but trust it in every part of my being. When I know that he is moving, my behavior should imitate that belief, but so often seeing the circumstances serve as discouragement when I should be mature enough to know that God has it handled. Theory is great, but application is better. I have enough faith to bring him my problems, enough faith to know that he can handle it, I need more faith to combat those moments when circumstance seems to be too much. I can say that circumstance has not caused me to abandon my trust in him, but that trust needs to grow to a place where nothing interferes; not even my own emotion. Why remain angry over something that he said he would fix? Because I still need help with my unbelief! I long for great faith. I don't want to stay in the mustard seed faith that I started out with, I need it to grow!